Short Story: The Boy Next Door

Dr. Balesh Jindal narrates a heart-wrenching story of young love and how caste tears the lovers apart.

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It was the year 1990.

A wonderful year, specially for all below twenty and nearly.

Ramu’s store was literally a hole in the wall, where he curled his well-oiled mustache and sometimes surreptitiously his hand would find its way near his groin where he would scratch his balls.

Gudiya, his sister, was a wild spirited girl. She wanted to ride her brother’s new bike, run wild in the farm nearby, and look at the boy next door. If she stood on tiptoes, she could see him every time he left the house.

He looked good from her window.

She opened the top button of her shirt, showing off a swell of young breasts and attempted a pirouette. High on youth and life, she whistled away.

Gudiya’s friend from school, received a call from a call center.

‘‘They want more girls, Gudiya…you also come..we both can go together every morning,’’

‘‘They will even teach you to speak proper English.” Mithu continued.

Convinced, she decided to ask her father. ‘‘Pitaji, I want to go and work in an office.’’

‘‘They will teach English and pay me.”

Pitaji had a soft corner for English. He had always wanted to be able to speak fluent English, but his father had got him married at eighteen. He looked at Gudiya and said,

‘‘You mean they will teach you English and pay you for learning?’’

‘‘OK, you can try for one month, I will see how well you can speak.’’

Pitaji was happy in a strange way.

‘At last this girl is on the right track,’ he had a soft corner for Gudiya for she had an innocence which frightened him for her future.

Gudiya and Mithu followed the rest of the people to the canteen for lunch.

‘‘Oh hi, you are also here,’’ came a clear voice from behind.

Gudiya turned around to see the boy next door, the one with puffy hair, standing next to her chair.

‘The hair doesn’t look too fashionable here, but he is nice looking,’ she thought.

‘‘I didn’t know that you worked here,’’ he smiled in an amiable tone.

Gudiya was flabbergasted at his sudden appearance after all the covert looks she had been giving him for so long.

Seeing him life size, so close, rattled her.

Mithu had told her that, ‘‘You can get pregnant if you look too long in a boy’s eyes.’’ There was no way she would get pregnant, boy or no boy, Gudiya continued eating her sandwich, without raising her gaze.

‘‘Let’s go for coffee,’’ said a voice from behind her.

Gudiya turned around to see the puff hair standing close to her. Gudiya lowered her eyes shyly.

‘‘Coffee, where?” she said dumbly.

‘Oh my God, where did my tongue go,’ she cursed herself.

‘‘Come let’s go, it will be fun,’’ he persisted.

‘I don’t have any money,’ thought Gudiya.

‘‘It’s my treat, I will pay,’’

‘Has he read my mind,’ Gudiya was a mess of emotions.

His name was Raja. He had two brothers. Gudiya, raised her eyes and listened to him, spellbound. She cast aside the fears of getting pregnant and looked into his eyes as he spoke.

‘‘Pitaji, I need to buy some pants and shirts because they want me to wear pants and shirts,’’ Gudiya looked shyly away.

’Such a nice girl my daughter is..’ Pitaji stroked her hair and looked affectionately at her.

‘‘Of course, Gudiya, you need to wear what is appropriate for the company,’’

The next morning Mithu and Gudiya set off for the nearby mall.

She bought two white shirts and two black pants.

There was another mannequin wearing a short skirt.

“Listen Mithu, I really want that black skirt, should I try it on?”

“Trying is OK, but you can’t wear it ever,’’ said Mithu pragmatically.

Gudiya scampered into the try room with the skirt.

‘‘Oh my, Gudiya, you look like that girl on TV,” Mithu stood and gaped at Gudiya, surprised at her daring.

‘‘I will take this also,’’ Gudiya told the girl at the counter and paid the bill and still had some money left over.

“Come Mithu, let’s have coffee,’’ Gudiya said in a euphoric glow.

“Hello,” a soft voice from behind shook the girls from their coffee tête-à-tête. Gudiya turned around,

‘‘Oh hello, Raja,’’ she said, delectably surprised.

‘‘Can I..?’’ He said looking at the empty chair and slid into it even before the girls could answer.

‘‘Of course, have coffee…it’s on me today..’’ said Gudiya, blushing a lovely rose.

‘‘Gudiya, be careful, my friend, you are playing with fire…your family will never allow it.”

‘‘Allow what?” Snapped Gudiya.

Gudiya stopped to face her friend as they walked back home.

‘‘Gudiya, your father will kill you…and your brother will kill Raja, don’t do it, stay away from Raja, you know he is from another caste?’’ She added.

Three Mondays later, Raja invited Gudiya for coffee as usual.

‘‘Hey Gudiya, come, let’s go out today,”

She looked back in surprise.

‘Where, when, who,’ Gudiya gasped at her own stupidity.

‘How dumb can I be?’

‘‘Where Raja?’’ She asked.

‘‘Let’s go to the mall,’’ he said, his eyes shining with excitement.

‘‘Give me a minute, I will join you downstairs.’’

Gudiya opened her bag and in a reckless spree took out the short black skirt she had bought that day with Khushi and untrussed her hair from the mandatory rubber band and shook it loose.

She tried the skirt,

‘Looks so good,’ she mumbled to herself and came down where Raja was standing.

His mouth fell open at the sight of Gudiya.

He had never seen a girl in a skirt, except Kareena Kapoor who wore it in one movie that he saw on his mobile phone.

Gudiya suddenly felt unbearably shy and couldn’t meet his eyes.

‘What am I to do…?’ Her head felt dizzy.

Raja took her out to a nice cafe in Ambience mall. Gudiya learnt that Raja’s father was a heart patient and his brother was mildly autistic,

‘‘So you know, I have to earn for everyone.’’ He sighed heavily.

‘‘But how can you spend so much money?’’

‘‘My uncle is supporting all of us, ever since my father fell ill, but it’s only for one more year, till I find a job.”

Raja and Gudiya sat murmuring sweet nothings, sipping coffee and making plans for the future, one shy and full of apprehension, the other deliciously excited.

‘‘Gudiya, will you marry me when I find a job?’’

Suddenly, Raja propped up the question to an unarmed Gudiya.

She was taken aback.

‘‘What, what do you mean?”’

‘This stupid shyness and blushing, I wish it came with warnings.’ Gudiya covered half her face with her palm so that he may not see her blush.

‘‘What marry, Pitaji will kill me if I tell him about you,”

Even the thought of it made her skin crawl with fear.

‘‘Then why do you come out with me, are you fooling me, leading me on, what am I supposed to think?”

He said passionately, his eyes red with emotion and anger. Gudiya sat looking at Raja,

‘‘Raja, listen to me, I am not fooling you, but I don’t know what to do,”

‘‘Let’s run away, they will forgive you after some time, I really can’t live without you.’’ he brought his face closer to hers and grazed her neck, lightly with his lips, and waited.

Then it happened, the kiss, Gudiya was too shocked at first and she froze. She let him kiss her on the lips. She could have brushed his face away but she didn’t. His hand slid over her exposed thigh.

‘Oh why did I wear a short skirt?’ Although his touch felt good.

‘What can I do, oh God.’

Then, she gave in and put her arms around his neck and kissed him with all the repressed feelings that had collected like a cesspool, ever since she turned thirteen. Pitaji and his strict rules, don’t go out now, I want you to come straight home from school.’

Ma had her own rules, ‘don’t wear this and don’t wear that, cover yourself.’

Bhaiya with his set of rules, I saw you talking to Meena, you know she is a Dhobi by caste.’

She held Raja’s face and kissed him, smothering his face, his ears, his hair and his neck, losing herself in this emotional outburst.

His gaze fell on her thigh again and he rubbed it gently.

‘‘I love the short skirt.” He said absently, delighted at the feel of her buttery thigh.

‘‘Gudiya, Gudiyaaa, Gud…, what are you doing here?” a sudden bellow filled the air and both of them awakened rudely from their magical reverie.

She looked up to see Bhaiya and his wife standing there and looking scandalized.

Raja’s hand up her skirt, her hand in his hair and her blouse in disarray. They were caught in the worst possible situation at the worst possible moment.

Pulled by her hair, Gudiya was locked up in the store room.

‘‘Let her starve to death,” shouted Pitaji. He sobbed in his pillow at night, but he knew that this fatality had to be executed.

“If you don’t get rid of her, Bhima, you will set a bad example for our girls…your daughter went out with a Chamar…,’’ (low community) warned the people from the Panchayat.

Gudiya screamed for a few days. Whenever she heard the sound of feet, she cried for food and water. Her cries became weaker after the second week and after the third week, when Pitaji went to peep in she lay on the ground, lifeless.

‘‘Just go early in the morning and bury her in the fields near the railway track, I have talked to the constable.” commanded Girish, head of the Panchayat.

After burying her, Pitaji lay down in the sugarcane fields nearby where tall grass grew and sobbed for hours. When the cows came home, he heard their bells, got up and headed home.

A broken man! A father who had killed his dear daughter.

He had bought her the first doll, her first cycle, her first camera, he had been the first person she walked with to school, her little fingers curling around his. He loved it when the teachers praised his little girl. She always scored the highest marks in English.

‘How could I listen to these villagers?’ He pounded his chest and wept, loudly.

‘I could have sent her to my village in UP.’

Two days later, Ma heard some sounds coming from the neighbor’s house. She closed the main door and sat on the charpoy with her eyes closed and trying to plug her ears so she wouldn’t hear sounds of killings. She sat there, motionless, till her husband and son came in with blood stained shirts. She quickly wrapped the stained clothes in layers of plastic bags and dumped them at night in the village dump-yard.

‘A case of robbery was registered in the neighboring chamar house.’ Murmurs went around.

‘A boy was killed, nothing much was taken,’ declared the news anchors.

The tragic news blew like the wind that has no source and no destination and no one paid much attention to it.

‘‘Which house..?’’ asked Mithu, looking up with her tear stained face.

She hadn’t eaten anything ever since she heard about Gudiya being taken to the fields to be buried.

Her brother was the constable and told her the deep secret.

‘‘The house where the chamar family lived,’’ said her mother, looking menacingly, as a warning to her daughter.

Bad things happen to bad girls.

In Gudiya’s room a dusty diary was found, that had this on the first page,

Frayed and fretting

Chafed and chipped

Gnawed over, till agony smirked

All over.

Spreadeagled, I lay

Soaked,

In omnipresent sadness.

Soul less splinters and shards

Wounded me,

I begged but

They spared me not.

‘This is life’ they said.

Author’s Bio

Dr. Balesh Jindal is a graduate of Lady Hardinge Medical College and has a medical practice for forty years and has seen a country emerge from an underdeveloped economy to an emerging economy.